BACKGROUND Development of metastasis in breast cancer is a multi-step process comprising changes in cytoskeletal structure and gene expression of tumour cells leading to changes in cell adhesion and motility. The Rho GTPase proteins, which function as guanine nucleotide regulated binary switches, govern a variety of cellular processes including cell motility and migration, changes in cell adhes...

Reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton is essential to numerous cellular processes including cell locomotion and cytokinesis. This actin remodeling is regulated in part by Rho family GTPases. Previous studies implicated Trio, a Dbl-homology guanine nucleotide exchange factor with two exchange factor domains, in regulating actin cytoskeleton reorganization, cell motility and cell growth via ac...

Recent analysis of Rho subfamily GTPases in Drosophila revealed roles for Rac and Cdc42 during axonogenesis. Here, we describe the identification and characterization of the Drosophila counterpart of Trio, a guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) that associates with the receptor phosphatase LAR and regulates GTPase activation in vertebrate cells. Mutants deficient in trio activity display de...

We present a novel application on model checking through SPIN as a means for verifying purely descriptive specifications written in TRIO, a first order, linear-time temporal logic with both future and past operators and a quantitative metric on time. The approach is based on the translation of TRIO formulas into Promela programs guided by an equivalence between TRIO and 2-way alternating Büchi ...

We introduce ULDBs: relational databases that add uncertainty and lineage of the data as first-class concepts. The ULDB model underlies the Trio system under development at Stanford. We describe the ULDB model, then present TriQL, our SQL-based query language for ULDBs. TriQL’s semantics over ULDBs is defined both formally and operationally, and TriQL extends SQL with constructs for querying li...

We introduce ULDBs: relational databases that add uncertainty and lineage of the data as first-class concepts. The ULDB model underlies the Trio system under development at Stanford. We describe the ULDB model, then present TriQL, our SQL-based query language for ULDBs. TriQL’s semantics over ULDBs is defined both formally and operationally, and TriQL extends SQL with constructs for querying li...

A Highlights from MBoC Selection The Rho-guanine nucleotide exchange factor Trio controls leukocyte transendothelial migration by promoting docking structure formation J. van Rijssel, J. Kroon, M. Hoogenboezem, F. P. J. van Alphen, R. J. de Jong, E. Kostadinova, D. Geerts, P. L. Hordijk, and J. D. van Buul 2831–2844 Neutrophils induce endothelial docking structures prior to crossing the blood v...

Partial inactivation of the Ankyrin repeat domain 26 (Ankrd26) gene causes obesity and diabetes in mice and increases spontaneous and induced adipogenesis in mouse embryonic fibroblasts. However, it is not yet known how the Ankrd26 protein carries out its biological functions. We identified by yeast two-hybrid and immunoprecipitation assays the triple functional domain protein (TRIO), the G pro...

Synaptic vesicles (SVs) fuse with the plasma membrane at a precise location called the presynaptic active zone (AZ). This fusion is coordinated by proteins embedded within a cytoskeletal matrix assembled at the AZ (CAZ). In the present study, we have identified a novel binding partner for the CAZ proteins Piccolo and Bassoon. This interacting protein, Trio, is a member of the Dbl family of guan...